Capitol Reflections Read online

  Marci’s hand began to shake, the paper making a thin, high-pitched rattling sound. She was perspiring heavily now.

  “Are you okay, Ms. Newman?” inquired Judge Jacobs.

  Marci wasn’t okay. Her eyes rolled up beneath her eyelids. She tried to speak, but her tongue seemed to have a mind of its own. The fingers of her right hand began to rhythmically pull at the silver chain around her neck, as if it were too tight and prevented her from breathing. A heart-shaped pendant, a Christmas gift from Gwen, dangled from the chain as Marci tugged hard on the small silver links.

  Seconds later, she fell to the parquetry of the courtroom floor, her arms and legs moving spasmodically like those of a marionette whose strings are being pulled by a sadistic, unseen puppeteer.

  2

  Marci slipped in and out of consciousness on the way to Bellevue, only occasionally managing to pry open her eyes to look at whatever appeared directly above her head—a hand, the head of a male paramedic, and IV tubing coiled in an overhead storage rack. Something—she guessed Valium—had broken her seizure, but she could only keep her awareness focused for seconds at a time, and even then reality was a series of unrelated slides in an out-of-focus carousel projector. Just when one image began to make sense, she would start to slip away again, alternating between memory and reality. Pictures of herself on the beach swam through her brain as she spiraled into unconsciousness.

  Now, overlapping voices clamored for attention. Multiple conversations—the kind she’d always been able to decipher—scrambled together. She was being rushed through a corridor on a gurney, and the overhead fluorescent lights were blinding. Doctors and nurses seemed to float about her in the awful luminescence, and either their speech was garbled or they were speaking in tongues. The fuzzy outline of a head appeared and asked if she knew her name, but Marci was too tired to answer.

  Got to hang in, she thought. Keep your head in the game.

  Gwen Maulder was relaxing with her husband Jack at the bar of The River Café, waiting to be seated. She was drinking a glass of Chardonnay, happy to get away from work early. This was one of those rare trips when her workload, Jack’s traveling schedule, and her best friend’s day planner all meshed. The subdued lighting over the bar created a lovely ambience of both peace and elegance. It was a good feeling. Gwen wished she could get Marci to understand that. Careers didn’t need to own your life. You could have it all if you performed the balancing act perfectly. She glanced over at Jack and smiled at him softly. No—career didn’t need to own your life.

  Gwen was in town to review current stats with people at the New York FDA office. She could have done this via download back at her computer in Rockville, Maryland, but she always relished a chance to see Marci. Gwen’s deceased father, Dr. Fitz McBean, had been an old-style family practitioner who put great emphasis on personal contact with people. Indeed, Gwen took over her dad’s practice when he died, but found she couldn’t run it alone. No one wanted to make house calls like Fitz, and using a minimal office staff to deal with HMOs had become oppressive. (“It’s not managed care,” Fitz had remarked. “It’s mangled care.”) So Gwen decided to use her considerable diagnostic skills in a different venue at a time in history when the federal government needed real doctors, not bureaucrats, to take the pulse of the nation’s health. Terrorism, anthrax, flu, AIDS—these factors and so many more demanded that competent physicians assess health concerns from a broader, more comprehensive perspective. So here she was in New York City, a public health official, a division chief in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service. Yet, she was still very much the daughter of Fitz McBean, only two generations removed from making house calls in a horse and buggy.

  And she couldn’t wait to see Marci.

  The conversation at the bar revolved around medicine, politics, movies, and a mutual friend whom, both Maulders were convinced, was having an affair with a decadent artist in SoHo, a man named Ernesto—no last name. She and Jack were laughing one moment, challenging each other at another, and ruminating the next. She loved that she could do that with him.

  Just as she loved the energy required to fill her role at the FDA. Every new drug carried with it the risk of unintended consequences, complications not detected in the pre-market testing. One-in-a-thousand atypical responses just don’t show up that often when only a few thousand patients at most are tested before drug release. Constant diligence—and the patience to withstand endless bureaucratic meetings—could be draining. Fortunately, Chardonnay and soft lighting could be so restorative.

  Gwen was having a harder-than-usual time relaxing, however. Marci had not been her usual self on the phone this morning, and Gwen felt a little on edge waiting for Marci to show up and explain why.

  “I really need some quiet time with you, more than just a long bathroom break at dinner,” she had said. Gwen tried to pry the subject out of her and managed only to ascertain that it had nothing to do with a current romance, Marci wouldn’t talk about it over the phone, and that it had her somewhat unnerved.

  In Marci’s twilight consciousness, the ocean looked bluer than it ever had before. Seagulls wheeled over the dunes as water gently washed across her feet before sinking into the sand. The wind pressed a blue dress of the lightest cotton firmly against her body while she peered into the hazy distance. A ship was slowly becoming invisible as it lumbered away from shore, finally disappearing over the horizon.

  How far had the water between her toes traveled, she wondered. Five miles? Five hundred? A thousand? What midnight constellations had ruled over these small trickles when they had been part of the immense depth that was the Atlantic Ocean? Had freighters cut through the waves that were now breaking onto shore, or had the swells been lonely and isolated?

  Gwen groaned as her pager relayed a phone number. She slid off the bar stool, walked to the restaurant’s foyer, and removed the cell phone from her purse. She didn’t recognize the telephone number on the pager, but she dutifully punched her keypad until she heard the ring tone of whoever wanted to speak with her.

  “This is Captain Maulder,” she said, hoping that the disturbance was nothing more than someone who couldn’t locate her last report on sub-clinical infections.

  Moments later, the blood drained from her face. She closed her flip-top phone with a flick of the wrist, went back to the bar, and took her husband’s hand.

  “We have to go,” she said, trying to keep the panic from her voice.

  “What’s up?” Jack Maulder asked, as Gwen pulled him onto the street, her legs almost breaking into a run.

  “That was the ER at Bellevue. It’s Marci. She’s had some kind of seizure.”

  “Is she going to be—”

  Gwen shook her head nervously. “They don’t know.”

  Jack stepped off the curb and hailed a taxi. Moments later, the vehicle’s red taillights faded into the gray twilight as a slight drizzle dampened a street warm from a day of sunshine and the friction of ten thousand tires.

  Marci felt a sharp prick in her right forearm and opened her eyes. Five minutes later, her pupils were not quite as dilated as before thanks to whatever was dripping through the tube snaking into her arm. She could see more clearly now and stared at the dots on the suspended ceiling. She felt slightly better and thought she might not die after all. All around her, machines were beeping and people were talking. She couldn’t actually see anyone since her peripheral vision was constricted, but she was alert enough to know that there was a steady flow of traffic in and out of the cubicle where her gurney was parked.

  “Anh,” she said. “Anh Nguyen. Tell her things will be okay.”

  “Don’t talk, Ms. Newman,” said a female voice. “Just lie still.”

  The beeping from one of the machines suddenly sounded faster and louder.

  That can’t be good, Marci thought. Not good at all.

  It wasn’t. Marci felt a sharp pain in her chest as her heart started beating more rapidly than it had ever beaten in her life. She thought the sensation might be similar to what a hummingbird felt as its wings fluttered faster than the human eye could possibly detect. The bird’s heartbeat, she recalled, was also incredibly fast, and she closed her eyes as her own heart hammered against her ribcage. She sensed more activity around her, doctors and nurses speaking in rapid-fire, staccato jargon.

  “Hi,” said a familiar voice.

  “Hi, Gwen,” said Marci, not opening her eyes. Her heart rate slowed a little when she heard the voice of her old friend.

  An argument followed, during which the medical team told Gwen she needed to leave the room, and Gwen informed them that she was a physician and a friend summoned to the hospital twenty minutes earlier.

  “Gwen?” said Marci, opening her eyes.

  “Yes, honey. I’m still here.” Gwen leaned directly over the gurney so Marci could see her face.

  “I love you.”

  The two women looked at each other, Gwen’s hand wrapped around Marci’s small, pale fingers.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Ond . . . dee,” said Marci.

  “What did you say, honey?”

  “Ondee,” Marci whispered again.

  “Ondine?” Gwen said, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “Your favorite ballet. We’ll see it again soon.”

  Marci tilted her head slightly, and for a brief moment her focus seemed sharper as she stared directly at Gwen. “Ondee,” she repeated.

  Gwen shook her head. “I understand.”

  Gwen’s eyes were filling with tears. Ondine was about a water sprite. Marci had always loved the tragic ballet. Perhaps it was her love of the ocean. Perhaps Marci identified with Ondine’s inability to find love. Either way, she had listened to its sad pas de de
ux over and over again.

  Suddenly Marci’s entire body went rigid. The beeping sound was replaced by a steady whine, terrifying to anyone who knew its significance.

  She was flatlining.

  At the beach, a hummingbird was carried far out to sea by a strong wind.

  A new adventure, the little bird thought. A brand new adventure.

  And then the bird was gone.

  3

  An attendant led Gwen and Jack through a maze of corridors to a small, carpeted room with a sofa and three chairs. A stately picture of the Hudson Valley hung over the sofa, and a standard-issue ficus plant rose in the corner, giving the room a bit of color in contrast to the sterile surroundings of the hospital. Gwen was stunned she could even notice this, stunned that the world had any detail for her at all at the moment. Marci was gone. Inexplicably gone.

  “What the hell just happened?” Gwen asked, sitting on the sofa.

  Jack Maulder, tall and broad-chested, pulled his wife close. He didn’t say a word and Gwen didn’t expect him to. He gave her what she needed just then—a place to cry for the conceivable future.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said when she’d regained a modicum of composure. “This isn’t possible.”

  “She literally worked herself to death,” Jack commented sympathetically. “You warned her for years to slow down, but Marci couldn’t resist the adrenaline rush of a high-powered career.”

  “Yeah, but she was pretty healthy, Jack, all things considered.”

  “People die unexpectedly every day even if they don’t lead stressful lives.”

  Wiping away fresh tears, Gwen ran her fingers through her hair. “I know, I know, I know,” she said with exasperation in her voice. “But I knew Marci, and . . . well . . . this shouldn’t have happened.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I don’t know what I’m suggesting, but people don’t die of seizures. Not the first time, when they’re in the prime of life.”

  “Sometimes they do, honey.”

  There were exceptions to everything. Gwen knew that. But the exceptions were extremely rare. It was virtually impossible to believe that Marci was one of them.

  Once again, a wave of tears crested on top of her. Marci had been Gwen’s best friend for most of two decades. She was as essential to her life as her heart and lungs. How do you survive that?

  Pulling herself together, Gwen rose abruptly.

  “Where are you going?” Jack asked, rising with her.

  “I have to call Marci’s family, hopefully before a stranger here at the hospital finds their number.” She pulled out her cell phone and started to walk away. Jack seemed confused by this, so she said, “I just need to be alone for a few minutes.”

  Gwen called Marci’s parents, people she felt as close to as anyone in her own family. Her mind flashed on holiday visits. When Gwen’s dad humorously battled her for the Thanksgiving wishbone, could either of them ever have imagined the conversation they were about to have?

  The call rapidly devolved to single syllables, incoherent fragments, and, ultimately, wails of grief. When it was over, Gwen leaned against the nearest available wall for support and sobbed against it because Jack’s chest was too far away.

  She had no idea how much time passed before she was capable of drying her eyes. When she did, she cleared her throat and scrolled to another number on her phone’s contact list.

  “Dave?” she said, unsure of how she sounded. “Captain Maulder, USPH. I’m going to be over tomorrow morning. You’re going to be getting a new customer shortly—Marci Newman’s the name. I want you to save a blood sample for me, but don’t accession it in your lab system. I want to take it back to Rockville with me, okay?”

  Dave Dardenoff was one of the assistant coroners at the New York State Medical Examiner’s Office across 32nd Street from Bellevue. Dave had worked at the FDA’s New York office for a while, but he fancied himself to be Quincy, the medical examiner from the old TV series. He preferred a real life medical mystery to analyzing charts and graphs and going on the occasional plant inspection. Dave and Gwen had always gotten along well, and he would provide her with a sample of Marci’s blood, no questions asked and strictly off the record.

  Gwen began walking back to the quiet room to rejoin her husband. He’d be worried about her by now, but he knew better than to come to look for her. Somewhere else in the hospital, Marci’s lifeless body lay. Everything in Gwen’s medical training told her that Marci shouldn’t be dead. She wouldn’t forgive herself if she didn’t do something to figure out what had just happened to her very best friend.

  4

  Mark Stern sat at his desk, playing Space Invaders on his Dell flatscreen. He took his job as a top reporter for the Wall Street Journal very seriously, but that didn’t stop him from sneaking in a little R & R during a day otherwise devoted to profiling the bluebloods who controlled the blue chips. He’d just turned forty, but part of him was always going to be a kid, and he had learned years ago that a complete surrender to adulthood was just too difficult for a man who still kept R.E.M. T-shirts and a jean jacket in his closet. He had attempted the quantum leap to responsible, dashing, GQ status; the most notable example being when he tried to placate his old girlfriend by wearing Brooks Brothers suits and attending elegant East Hampton parties, complete with string quartets, champagne, and caviar. He always left depressed, feeling like an imposter. He’d go back to his apartment, smoke a little dope, listen to bootleg Clash CDs, and dream of the Pulitzer he was going to win someday.

  In Mark’s dreams, that Pulitzer would come from a multi-part investigative piece on the plight of the tamarin or the spider monkey published in the Nation, but if it had to be about a next-generation globalized billionaire, that would work as well. Mark knew the Pulitzer thing really was more than just a dream, even if the subject matter probably was. He’d started his career by writing for various small town papers in upstate New York (“Police Chief Election To Be Held Saturday”) and gradually moved up to the New York Times, going after the kind of local stories buried on page four of the Metro section (“Priest Talks Jumper Off Whitestone Bridge,” “Chimpanzees Found In Bronx Apartment—Owner Pleads Ignorance”). Stern was a ringmaster in the word circus where reporters used prose style aimed at seventh-grade syntax. While his editors never took the stories seriously, the paper’s marketing department started noticing one reader poll after another in which Stern’s stories and byline were the only ones readers could remember. The publisher, well aware of the importance of selling newspapers, ordained that the Times give Stern his own column.

  For Mark, this was a personal emancipation proclamation, freeing him to be an iconoclast who stylized the eccentricities of the frenzied, dispirited commuters who poured into the New York City subway system every day so they could make a few bucks, go home, sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

  The column went platinum when the paper suggested he collect his observations into a book, Sterner Stuff. It spent a few weeks on the bottom of the bestseller list and spawned a sequel, Latitudes and Attitudes, that landed Mark on Letterman and Charlie Rose. The liberal management of the Times certainly gave Mark healthy latitude to lampoon everything from what he called “the Neanderthal nature of twenty-first century man” to the myriad verbal blunders of a sitting president. In short, he had achieved celebrity status, with his name and picture on the sides of hundreds of city buses. And he had done it all while keeping a few posters of whales and condors on his apartment walls.

  Reporters like Stern didn’t usually get calls from the Wall Street Journal, regardless of talent. The Journal was famous for supporting presidents and political potentates who were always optimistic, even if the Dow suggested that the nation’s financial roller coaster was bottoming out. The paper was decidedly conservative, always bullish, and rewarded writers who regarded William F. Buckley as a thoughtful moderate. Stern, however, had written eloquently on the Enron scandal while at the Times, championing workers while simultaneously skewering the likes of Ken Lay and company. And he had done so with less irony in his prose, showing compassion for the countless employees who lost a lifetime of savings to executives and their golden parachutes.